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John Henry Mackay (6 February 1864 – 16 May 1933) was an individualist anarchist, thinker and writer. Born in Scotland and raised in Germany, Mackay was the author of Die Anarchisten (The Anarchists, 1891) and Der Freiheitsucher (The Searcher for Freedom, 1921). Mackay was published in the United States in his friend Benjamin Tucker's magazine, Liberty. He was a noted homosexual.

Life

Mackay was born in Greenock on February 6, 1864. His mother came from a prosperous Hamburg family. His father was a Scottish marine insurance broker who died when the child was less than two years old, at which point mother and son returned to Germany, where Mackay grew up.[1]

Mackay lived in Berlin from 1896 onwards, and became a friend of scientist and Gemeinschaft der Eigenen co-founder Benedict Friedlaender.

Despite [Rudolf Steiner's] later assertions, it seems that he did not at the time rule out the possibility of a reformation of human nature in terms less occult, and more related to the social goals of the opponents of materialist society. He became involved in the Free Literary Society, taught at the Berlin Workers' School, and generally behaved himself as a member of the Progressive Underground -- more respectable, more established than most; but he undoubtedly belonged to this milieu. He formed a friendship with John Henry Mackay, a half-Scot, half-German anarchist of some fame who was the editor of Max Stirner and who had admired Steiner's book The Philosophy of Freedom. At Steiner's marriage to the widow Anna Eunicke (on 31 October 1899), Mackay was the witness. [82]

Mackay died in Stahnsdorf on 16 May 1933, ten days after the Nazi book burnings at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Adolf Hitler had become Reichskanzler on 30 January 1933, and soon all activities of the German homosexual emancipation movement ceased. Allegations that Mackay's death may have been a suicide have been disputed:

Mackay died on 16 May 1933 in the office of his doctor, only a few houses from his own, apparently of a heart attack. He was also suffering from stones in his bladder.

— Kennedy, Hubert. Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay

Writing and influence

Using the pseudonym Sagitta, Mackay wrote a series of works for pederastic emancipation, titled Die Bücher der namenlosen Liebe (Books of the Nameless Love). This series was conceived in 1905 and completed in 1913 and included the Fenny Skaller, a story of a pederast.[2] Under his real name he also published fiction, such as Der Schwimmer (1901) and, again as Sagitta, he published a pederastic novel of the Berlin boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (literally "The Boy-Doll", but published in English as The Hustler) (1926). In a note to the American publisher of this book, Christopher Isherwood said, "It gives a picture of the Berlin sexual underworld early in this century which I know, from my own experience, to be authentic."

THE CAMEL RIDER

The camel-rider swoops acrossthe desert, with his howling Jinn,To wreck and ravage human life;insufferable Bedawin! But shall he ravish thee from me?I see the camel check and kneel,Vanquished by dread of the Unknown,appalled by fear of the Unseen!To Death is Love impregnable;To Love seems Death desirable,Fixing the lightning flash of lifeand making permanent the scene.The Zahid looks from Life to Death;the Sufi gathers Death from Life;They podex between 'twixt thy buttocks lies,the Future and the Past between.The Sufi pierces, gains and holdsthe Present; can the present fade?Never! through all the seas of timefares on the prow erect and keen. The keel a member fit to piercethe podices of ocean-lords,Clasped to thy gushing bosom-waves,o pearly amorous undine!The `Maybe' and the `Letushope',the `Allahknows; and `I believe';The `Sweetitwas' and `Werecall',the `Pitytis' and `Mighthavebeen': These founder in the rushing tide,these bear a cargo black with fear,Heavy with hate and dull with woe,a miserable load of teen:While we the `Jolly Roger' sailwhose freight is fairy pearls of dew;The podex and the member locked,without a bar, without a screen.Remembrance and regret we quash;we banish traitor hope and fear;The present ecstacy is all,the Middle Path, the Golden Mean.And He endure, then love endures:-- so El Qahar will ever sing,Till he the world from mil of prayerto wine of meditation wean. Like peacocks in a garden spreadour thousand eyes of jewel-sheen.Though squawking with an eunuch's voice,our paederastic plumes we preen.For voice is sound, and dies with air;light is co-excellent with God; As Hate's a poison for delight,so love's a physic for the spleen.And El Qahar is Truth, and noughtbut Allah stuffs his gaberdine, {FN10}And Allah windeth he aboutwith tarband gemmed of gold and green.

Richard Strauss's well-known songs from his Vier Lieder (Op. 27), a wedding gift to his wife in 1894, include settings to music of two of Mackay's poems: "Morgen!" and "Heimliche Aufforderung". Other uses of Mackay's poems by Strauss include "Verführung" (Op. 33 No. 1) and "In der Campagna" (Op. 41 No. 2).

• Kennedy, Hubert. Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay (2nd Edition, 2002)• "On the Nameless Love and Infinite Sexualities: John Henry Mackay, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Origins of the Sexual Emancipation Movement", Journal of Homosexuality, Vol 50, No.1, 2005.

External links

• John Henry Mackay (1864-1933) Find A Grave memorial• Works by John Henry Mackay at Project Gutenberg• Works by or about John Henry Mackay at Internet Archive• Works by John Henry Mackay at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) • Bike tour to John Henry Mackay’s grave• Thomas A. Riley, New England Anarchism in Germany. Retrieved Feb 2, 2008.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

When Richard Strauss married the singer Pauline de Ahna in Weimar on 10 September 1894, his wedding gift to her was, appropriately, a set of songs. Dedicated "to my beloved Pauline," they were his Op. 27, "four of his greatest Lieder" according to Strauss scholar Michael Kennedy (1976, 28). One was written only the day before the wedding, but two of them, "Heimliche Aufforderung" and "Morgen!"— set to lyrics of the poet John Henry Mackay— were completed on successive days the preceding May and must have already been familiar to the new Frau Strauss. They continue to be familiar to the musical public, especially the second of these, for, as Kennedy noted: "the last of the group is the wondrous Morgen, which custom can never stale, if the singer is an artist" (210)— a judgment confirmed in recent years by Jessye Norman in her all-Strauss recitals. But while information on the composer is readily available, concertgoers who have wished to know more about the lyricist have usually been frustrated, for neither the "old Grove" nor the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians has an entry on Mackay, and the entries on him in reference works of German literature are few and often misleading. A brief sketch of Mackay's life will be given here, including his contact with Strauss, along with an indication of how this can help us better appreciate these lyrics. (Two biographies of Mackay have been published: Riley 1972, Solneman 1979).

John Henry Mackay was born in Greenock, Scotland, on 6 February 1864, but was only nineteen months old when his Scottish father, a marine insurance broker, died. His mother then returned with her son to her native Germany, where she later re- married. After completing his schooling, Mackay was briefly an apprentice in a publishing house and then attended several universities, but only as an auditor. An allowance from his mother, who was of a well-off merchant family, gave him enough money to live modestly, so that he was able to choose the career of writer without worrying about eventual sales of his books. This situation changed in later years, especially after the First World War when the runaway inflation in Germany wiped out the value of the annuity he had purchased with money inherited from his mother. In his last years he was barely able to support himself from the sale of his books. He died in Berlin on 16 May 1933.

Mackay's first publication was in 1885 when, following a brief visit to Scotland, he wrote a narrative poem in imitation of Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake (Mornin 1986). Instant fame came to him, however, with the publication in 1891 of Die Anarchisten (The Anarchists), which also appeared in English that same year (see now Mackay 1999) and by 1910 had been translated into six other languages. Having announced already in 1889 his intention to prepare a biography of Max Stirner (1806-1856), Mackay was known as the rediscoverer of that philosopher of egoism long before the biography actually appeared in 1898. In the meantime, he had published several volumes of lyric poetry. (The collected edition of his poetry in 1898 has over 600 pages.) And in 1901 his novel Der Schwimmer (The Swimmer) — which Mackay later tried, unsuccessfully, to have made into a film — was one of the first literary sports novels; it remains important for the history of competitive swimming and, especially, diving.

Thus Mackay's interests were varied, and it was probably not his lyric poetry that first attracted Strauss, but rather Mackay's anarchist philosophy and his connection with Stirner. Strauss wrote his father, the horn virtuoso Franz Strauss, on 7 April 1892: "In Berlin I made the charming acquaintance of a Scottish poet John Henry Mackay, a great anarchist and biographer of the Berlin philosopher Max Stirner" (Schuh 1976, 261). And Arthur Siedl has related that only three hours before the premiere of Strauss's Guntram in Weimar on 10 May 1894 the two of them "passionately" discussed Mackay's book Die Anarchisten (Schuh 1976, 261). Less than two weeks after that discussion, Strauss set to music the two love lyrics of Mackay mentioned above.

These poems were first published in 1890 in Das starke Jahr, Mackay's third volume of lyric poetry, and both were singled out by critics. Ernst Kreowski (1891) wrote that "Morgen!" was "the most beautiful of the whole collection" and quoted it in his review; in a later study of Mackay's work, Paul Friedrich (1908-09) wrote that "the high point of his lyric poetry was reached by Mackay in 1890 with Das starke Jahr," and he chose "Heimliche Aufforderung" for quotation. Strauss scholars, too, have written warmly of these lyrics. In discussing Strauss's Op. 27, Norman Del Mar wrote of "Heimliche Aufforderung" (Secret Invitation): "Anything further from Mackay's anarchistic mission than this fervent love song it would be hard to find and the whole conception of the lovers' secret tryst amidst a group of merry-makers is happy in the extreme" (1973, 3: 286). And he concluded: "The last song in the group is the ever popular Morgen! again to a love poem by Mackay, though this time in a mood of deep rapture" (3: 287).

The composition of these songs must have helped to bring Strauss and Mackay closer. Max Halbe reported that he met Strauss at a party at Mackay's house, where the songs were sung (Solneman 1979, 96); and it was through Mackay's mediation that Strauss and his wife gave a concert at the Neue Freie Volksbuhne in Berlin (Solneman 1979, 102). That was before Strauss's call to Berlin as conductor of the Royal Court Opera in 1898. The high point of their contact came on 28 November 1899 when the Volksbuhne gave a "Mackay evening" at which Frau Strauss sang the Mackay songs, accompanied by her husband at the piano. The evening was introduced by an appreciation of Mackay's work by Rudolf Steiner, the later anthroposophist, but then editor of a literary journal and a particularly close friend of Mackay. A. A. Rudolph wrote of the evening: "The poet himself kept back shyly, although the affair, with 2000 attending, was an enthusiastic manifestation for the poet, the musician, and the speaker" (Schellenberg 1982, 16).

Hartmann is of considerable interest to this investigation as it was he who helped create the Ordo Templi Orientis, a German occult society formed around the idea of sexual magic. Other illustrious members of the OTO will include another Theosophist, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who will go on to form the Anthroposophical Society in 1912; Gerard Encausse, who -- under the nom de plume of "Papus" -- had written the first definitive text on the Tarot as a book of concealed illuminism; [12] and Aleister Crowley, whose A...A..., or Argentum Astrum ("Silver Star"), was founded in 1907, the same year as the Order of New Templars mentioned above.

Contact between the two men had probably ceased by the time Mackay's mother died in 1902; their careers certainly diverged thereafter. Although very nearly the same age— four months separated them— Strauss's fame as conductor and composer rapidly increased, while for Mackay the following time was as period when, as he later wrote, "people thought my artistic power had disappeared." For eight years beginning in 1905 and using a pseudonym, Mackay gave his time and energy— and much of his money— to a new cause, the struggle to free homosexuals (and boy-lovers in particular— Mackay himself was attracted to boys between the ages of fourteen and seventeen) from social prejudice and legal persecution. This aspect of Mackay's life is missing from all standard reference works, but some knowledge of it is necessary for an understanding of the lyrics of the Strauss song. This was suggested by Mackay himself in a passage of the autobiographical novel Fenny Skaller, which he wrote at that time under his pseudonym Sagitta (the Latin word for "arrow"). In one of the chapters, the title character, Fenny Skaller, has just finished a light supper with wine:

While he still held the glass in his hand his glance fell on the back of a book and he read a beloved name— the name of a poet whom only they could entirely understand who knew who and what he was, and whom, therefore, the majority did not understand at all. (Mackay 1988, 68)

Whether or not Mackay intended the "beloved name" of this passage as his own, it clearly applied to him, and there is no doubt that the homosexuality of the author is implied.

Dedication to this cause helped lift Mackay from the depression that followed the death of his mother. His plan was to use his ability as a writer to rally others to the cause before "going public" with it, and he projected two publications a year to be sold by subscription only. (Their length varied; the novel Fenny Skaller, whose purpose was to "deepen psychologically" the concept he called "the nameless love," and a book of poems, in which he meant to "sing its praises," were the longest.) The project was conceived in 1905 and the first booklets published in 1906, but four of the Sagitta poems had already appeared in 1905 in the Berlin magazine Der Eigene (The Self-Owner), which began in 1896 as an anarchist journal in the direction of Max Stirner, but from 1898 was openly homosexual. That Mackay was very concerned to keep his identity secret is shown by the care he took in his contact with the journal's editor Adolf Brand: although Mackay was living in Berlin and personally acquainted with Brand, the poems and all correspondence concerning them came from Dresden in the handwriting of Mackay's friend, the Dresden actress Luise Firle (1865-1942) (Adolf Brand to Martin Fiedler, 21 August 1939. Bibliothek). Despite Mackay's caution his booklets were confiscated by the police in 1908 and, after a court battle that dragged on for nineteen months, were finally declared immoral and ordered destroyed and forbidden, while their publisher, Bernard Zack, was given a stiff fine (which was, in fact, paid by Mackay). His care to keep his identity secret had been the right strategy, however, for, as he wrote to his American anarchist friend Benjamin R. Tucker in his rather faulty, but still understandable English: "If they had known who Sagitta was, they had to sentence me logically for prison" (Mackay 1991, no. 42).

Despite this setback, Mackay completed his Books of the Nameless Love, which were published in a one-volume edition in 1913, ostensibly in Paris, but sold underground by him in Berlin. Afterwards he wrote under his real name, but he returned once again as Sagitta in 1926 with the novel Der Puppenjunge, which is set in the milieu of boy prostitutes in Berlin in the 1920s (Mackay 1985). By then Mackay's identity as Sagitta was an open secret, though this was never acknowledged by him. He stated in his will, however, that whenever the Sagitta works were reprinted they should bear his true name.

It must be clear from this discussion that the love lyrics of Mackay were inspired by boys. Although some of them are written as if addressed to women, most leave the gender of the beloved unstated, and this is so of the two Strauss songs mentioned. Since it is brief, "Morgen!" may be quoted as an example:

Tomorrow again will shine the sun And on my sunlit path of earth Unite us again, as it has done, And give our bliss another birth.

The spacious beach under wave-blue skies We'll reach by descending soft and slow, And mutely gaze in each other's eyes, As over us rapture's great hush will flow.

Mackay later revised the last line of this poem, replacing "stummes" with "grosses" ("great"— as given in the above translation), presumably to avoid the close repetition of "stumm" in the line before.

For Mackay's early love epic Helene it can be shown that the title character was patterned after a boy he knew (Kennedy 1986). This strategy is not uncommon in literature, though it is perhaps significant that in the next Mackay poem that Strauss set, "Verftihrung" (Seduction, 1896, Op. 33, No. 1), the object of the seduction was clearly identified as female ("du Schone!). Even so, as Norman Del Mar notes, "it was sternly received by the critics at the first performance and the wretched singer accused of immodest behaviour" (3: 301). The last of the Mackay songs of Strauss was "In der Campagna" (1899, Op. 41, No. 2), a hymn to nature and not a love song.

Besides Richard Strauss, several other composers also wrote settings for poems of Mackay. In 1902 Max Reger also set "Morgen!" (Op. 66, No. 10) and three years later Arnold Schonberg set Mackay's "Am Wegrand" (By the Wayside, Op. 6, No. 6). This last is particularly interesting since the object of the poet's longing is unexpectedly, for a poem with Mackay's real name, clearly male. It begins: "A thousand people are passing by/ The one I long for, he is not among them!"

At least four other poems of Mackay have been set to music: "Auf dem Meer" (Op. 54) by Hugo Kaun, "Aus unserer Zeit" (Op. 2) by Gustav Brecher, "Wild schaumen auf" by Leo Michielsen, and "Ich ging an deinem Haus voruber" by Eugen d'Albert (also born in Scotland, two months after Mackay). This last song was mentioned in the report of Mackay's funeral that Walther Heinrich wrote (in English) to Mackay's longtime friend Benjamin R. Tucker:

On the evening of Saturday the 20TH May we had a little funeral at Wilmersdorf near Berlin. As he had wished, no word was spoken, we were only five persons. But the organ played pieces of Bach and Handel, a female singer sung his "Ich ging an deinem Haus voruber..." with accompaniment of organ and violin after the composition of d'Albert. Some other compositions, an adagio of a violin sonata of Handel and a fugue of Bach made the finale. The ashes are deposited on a churchyard at Stahnsdorf, a stone with the name will there be laid on the place. (Mackay 1991, no. 196)

This description of the "little funeral" of Mackay points up the diverse destinies of Strauss and Mackay, for while the former survived the Nazi era, all of the "Sagitta" writings of Mackay, which had been left unmolested during the Weimar Republic, were put on the Nazi list of forbidden books and his anarchist writings likewise disappeared from view. Mackay was a many-sided thinker, but only since about 1974, with the founding of a new Mackay Gesellschaft, has a concerted effort been made to recall this unjustly forgotten writer to the attention of a larger public. The beauty of his lyrics, however, has been constantly recalled through the songs of Strauss. Love is indeed a universal sentiment, as is shown by the fact that the lyric poetry of John Henry Mackay, inspired by boys, could in turn inspire the musical genius of Richard Strauss.

Thy podex like a rose, withinThy buttocks, sprays of jessamine,Buds to my kisses; then the wineSets this old head of mine aspin,So that I push thee to thy knees -- A worship, darling, not a sin.Deep as I plunge, I do not breakWithin the velvet of thy skin.Do what I will, thy self is hidFrom me by envy of the JinnSo, when I think, I cannot pierceThe truth of things; I cannot winUnto the real; life's wheel is keptFrom turning by its axle-pin. But swing thine hips and smile uponThe hideous world's malicious grin!Then when we end, the task is light:Bid El Qahar once more begin!

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Reuss was the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was introduced to Ludwig II of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner‘s Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. Reuss later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name « Charles Theodore. »

In 1876, Reuss married Delphina Garbois from Dublin, and moved to Munich in 1878. Their marriage was annulled, due to bigamy (Hergemöller, 1998). They had a son, Albert Franz Theodor Reuss (1879–1958), a self-educated zoologist who lived in Berlin (Krecsák and Bohle 2008).

Police spy

In 1885, in England, Reuss joined the Socialist League. He had been quite involved as a librarian and labour secretary. On May 7, 1886 he was expelled as a police spy in the pay of the Prussian Secret Police. This took place in a sectarian atmosphere, with tensions between anarcho-communist Josef Peukert and the Bakuninist Victor Dave where such accusations were often made without substance. However, this accusation came from the Belgian Social Democrats, and was raised here by Henry Charles. Peukert and the Gruppe Autonomie published a rebuttal of these allegations which appeared in the Anarchist, which also accused Dave of being a spy. However, in February 1887 Reuss used the unwitting Peukert to track down Johann Neve in Belgium, who was then arrested by the German police. This was major coup for the police as Neve had been smuggling arms and propaganda into Germany. He died shortly after in a prison in Munich, perhaps murdered. (This incident is touched upon in John Henry Mackay‘s Die Anarchisten.)

Founds Ordo Templi Orientis

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt‘s Bavarian Order of Illuminati. While in England, he became friends with William Wynn Westcott, the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Westcott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated February 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of Ordo Templi Orientis with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved of Reuss’s connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry.

The French occultist and physician Gérard Encausse (perhaps better known by his pen-name Papus) was one such contact. Although not a member of a regular Masonic order, he had founded two occult fraternities: the Martinist group, l’Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus and the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. In addition, he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and a Bishop in a neo-Gnostic church, l’Église Gnostique de France. Encausse provided Reuss with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist order in Germany. He also assisted Reuss in the formation of the O.T.O. Gnostic Catholic Church by proclaiming the E.G.C. a « child » of l’Église Gnostique de France, which linked the E.G.C. to French neo-gnosticism.

Meanwhile, Westcott assisted Reuss in contacting the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833–1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss’s newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss’s authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss’s shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings‘s work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the Theosophical Society), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse’s "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss raised Encausse to the X° of the O.T.O.’s Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and gave him a patent to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Ancient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris. He possibly received in return some position of authority in the Église Catholique Gnostique. Reuss also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879–1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

Meets Aleister Crowley

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with Aleister Crowley. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley’s previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley’s appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M∴M∴M∴. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M∴M∴M∴ and the Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴, which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII (52), the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass for Reuss’s Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant’s Thumb (1915) to Reuss. In 1913 he became Grand Master of the Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, a masonic group which previously included the revolutionaries Louis Blanc and Giuseppe Garibaldi amongst its ranks.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a Revised O.T.O. Constitution of 1917 (based in a large part on Crowley’s 1913 Constitution of the M∴M∴M∴), with a « Synopsis of Degrees » and an abridgment of « The Message of the Master Therion » appended. Reuss held an « Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines » at Monte Verità August 15–25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley’s poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, « Libertas et Fraternitas » in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881–1934) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley’s Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had readThe Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, « Let this news encourage you! We live in your Work!!! »

After the First World War

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a « Gauge of Amity » document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated « American Masonic Federation. » On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the « Antioch Succession, » and re-appointed as « Gnostic Legate » to Switzerland for Bricaud’s Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the « World Federation of Universal Freemasonry » in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud’s support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley’s Gnostic Mass as the « official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite. » Reuss’s efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to Charles Stansfeld Jones and Heinrich Tränker to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another « Gauge of Amity » document, this time to H. Spencer Lewis, founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September 1921, settling in Munich.

Death and succession

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March 1943: « the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on… He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks. » Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his friend Frank (Allan) Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss’s continuing ability to effectively govern the Order.

It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss’s letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, « It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication—to proclaim myself as such. » He signed the letter « Baphomet O.H.O. » Reuss’s response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss « resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour. »

However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss’s response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: « I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars. » Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: « Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), and designating me in his last letter as his successor. » In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 – Jan. 1925), Crowley said, « in the O.H.O.’s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior. » Reuss’s letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Leopold Engel

Leopold Engel (b. April 19, 1858 – d. November 8, 1931) was a German writer and occultist.

Early life

Engel was born in St Petersburg, Russia. His father was Karl Dietrich Engel (1824–1913), a violinist who in 1846 became Konzertmeister (leader) of the orchestra of the Imperial Russian Theatre.

Career

Leopold Engel went to Germany, finally settling in Dresden where he wrote extensively on the Faust legend. He became a follower of occultist Jakob Lorber (1800–1864) who wrote ten volumes of "inspired" teachings. In 1891 Engel himself heard an "inner voice" which commanded him to write an 11th volume of Lorber's work, The Great Gospel of John.

During the 1890s he became involved with Theodor Reuss in reviving the Illuminati in Germany, setting up an irregular masonic lodge which they called the Ludwig Lodge. This and several other lodges they were active in were not recognised by any of the regular German Grand Lodges. This association came to an end on July 3, 1903 with Engel's expulsion along with his friend Siegmund Miller.

History of the Illuminati Order.A contribution to the history of Bavaria.Prehistory, founding (1776), relationship to Freemasonry, persecution by the Jesuits, evolution to the present time, for authentic documents in the Secret State Archives of Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Gotha, Paris, Vienna, the Secret Archive of the Illuminati Order and various private archiveswritten by Leopold angelWith many blackboards and illustrations printed in the text.BerlinHugo Bermühler Verlag1906th

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

1. PREFACE

IN ORDER TO introduce Theodor Reuss we can do no better than to quote what his erstwhile but now disillusioned friend August Weinholtz wrote about him in the French masonic periodical L'Acacia in 1907:

This man's cleverness and extraordinary activities, his sophistries, his knowledge of languages, his ability to play no matter what role, make him a real international menace. In some respects he reminds one of Cagliostro, the most brilliant of all masonic charlatans, who successfully contrived to dupe his contemporaries ... Reuss uses more up to date methods to make people believe in his connections with powerful masonic bodies and, in accordance with the spirit of our age, places sexuality in the foreground ... From a journalistic point of view Reuss is rather an interesting figure. In him we encounter the kind of adventurer portrayed by 17th- and 18th-century writers. But he is a child of our time and social conditions. What is lamentable is that at the threshold of the 20th century it is necessary for the masonic world to be warned anew against a Cagliostro, also that there are men who publicly dare to defend such a person.[1]

It is necessary to explain why the authors of this paper decided to investigate Reuss. In relation to the history of ideas we have both specialized in the study of so-called 'underground movements', i.e. the multifarious sects which have proliferated in Europe since the era of the Renaissance. In the case of Reuss we were aware that he had been active as a promoter of irregular or pseudo-masonic rites in Germany during the early 1900s, also that vestigial survivals of some of his foundations still exist today in Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and the United States of America. Reuss, however, cannot be easily fitted into any of the sectarian patterns with which we have become increasingly familiar. His fields of activity were so varied that we cannot identify him as a typical promoter of irregular masonic rites, typical member of revolutionary socialist circles (in London during the 1880s), typical concert promoter, Prussian police spy, journalist, occultist, protagonist of women's liberation, gnostic 'Bishop' and so on. There would be no very urgent reason for spending time examining Reuss's career except for the fact that there are a fair number of references to his activities in masonic literature and that many of them are inaccurate, so a biographical sketch may not be superfluous. It remains to add that the text printed below is a consideration of a book-length preliminary study and many details have been omitted.

2. EARLY YEARS, 1855-85

Albert Karl Theodor Reuss, the son of Franz Xaver Reuss, an inn-keeper, was born at Augsburg on 28 June 1855. He was educated locally and attended a school which equipped youngsters for modest careers in commerce. For a period after 1872 (at. 17) he was possibly employed in a druggist's shop. He was in London three months after his 21st birthday in 1876 and was initiated on 8 November 1876 in the Pilgrim Lodge No. 238. Its members were of exclusively German origin and, then as now, it worked in the German language. According to the minute book he was a 'businessman from Augsburg'. He was passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on 8 May 1877 and raised on 9 January 1878. No further attendances at lodge meetings are recorded and he ceased to be a member on 1 October 1880 when he was excluded, probably because he had not paid his subscription. It is possible that he had been proposed for membership by Heinrich Klein, a dealer in sheet music at 3 High Holbom, who had become a joining member in 1872 and was Director of Ceremonies in 1872-3. He was to become involved in Reuss's later masonic activities.

In his youth Reuss must have had a reasonably good bass voice. He claimed to have met Richard Wagner for the first time in 1873 (at. 18)[2]. He was a professional singer, mainly in Germany, during the early 1880s. He claimed to have taken part in Angelo Neumann's English tour in 1882 and to have sung the role of the god Donner in Das Rheingold and to have subsequently performed at Amsterdam, Munich and Quedlinburg. Reuss wrote that he began his career under the auspices of the late Richard Wagner, who selected him while still a student to take part in the first performance of Parsifal at Bayreuth [in 1882]'.[3] He may have sung in the chorus. He was in London again early in 1885 and active both as a singer and a journalist. He now appears on a curious political stage.

3. MEMEBERSHIP OF THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE[4]

William Morris together with Edward Avering and his common law wife Eleanor (Karl Marx's daughter "Tussy') broke away from the Social Democratic Federation after a quarrel with H. M. Hyndman at the end of 1884 and founded the Socialist League. This was fifteen years before Keir Hardie and J. Ramsay Macdonald founded the Independent Labour Party. The League was in contact with a number of emigre German social democrats, anarchists and communists who had found asylum in London from the unwelcome attentions of the Prussian political police, Reuss, who used the pseudonym Charles Theodore, joined the Socialist League soon after he arrived in London in February or March 1885. He gained admittance by falsely stating that he was a member of the International Workers' Education Association, and to the latter by claiming that he was already a member of the Socialist League. In the Socialist League he was forthwith appointed 'Lessons Secretary' and in that capacity taught the German comrades English. Thus he cultivated the acquaintance of men who were deeply involved in the activitlc of extreme left-wing groups. He had close contacts with professed anarchists. The latter, with their connections with colleagues in Belgium who smuggled subversive literature and explosives into Germany, were naturally of particular interest to the Prussian political police.

Later, when Reuss was no longer active in the Socialist League milieu, individuals who had encountered him in 1885-6 recorded their recollections of him. Max Nettlau, for instance, recalled his 'harsh voice and hasty, pushing manner'; Josef Peukert characterized him as 'a platonic socialist, like so many liberal bourgeois', while Victor Dave wrote that he 'appeared to enjoy a sort of half-digested bourgeois culture'. Another remembered that 'in the opinion of 'most of the comrades he was a rich chap who had a lot of money and wasn't stingy when he was asked to support revolutionary propaganda'. Reuss said that his money was provided by a well-endowed wife. While he may have married in London in 1885 nothing is known about the lady. Many years later it emerged that she bore him a son. With hindsight many of his former socialist and anarchist connections had come to the conclusion that he was an unreliable person.

During 1885-6 he combined his activities in the Socialist League and International Workers' Association with his career as a singer. According to a publicity leaflet which he had printed in 1885 he appeared at a concert given by the Literary and Artistic Society at which he sang arias from the Magic Flute. He also sang at a Ballad and Operatic Concert at the St James's Hall and the Musical Review critic predicted that he would have 'a good career in this country'. Tussey Aveling, on the other hand , had a low opinion of his artistic taste and complained bitterly about the vulgarity of the songs sung at a Socialist League concert which Reuss had organized.[5]

His journalistic career may have begun in 1885. The editor of the Suddeutsche Presse at Munich wrote to him on 3 November to say that he would soon publish his 'interesting and clear article about the state of the English political parties' and would gratefully accept further contributions.[6]

If the Musical Review critic's assessment of Reuss's prospects in England was sanguine, his optimisim was not shared by the colleague who reported on a recital given by Reuss and his friend Madame Sanderini at the Kurhaus at Aachen on 15 May 1886. Reuss's advance publicity had identified him as 'the famous conductor of the Popular Wagner Concerts and basso at Her Majesty's Theatre in London'. The local critic referred to his flat-sounding voice, his over-confident entrance and his peeved expression 'which seemed to express his unfulfilled expectation of fat financial receipts'. The writer advised him to seek his further fortune on the other side of the English Channel. Madame Sanderini's voice was described as being past its best. His conclusion was that 'the pair have little hope of enhancing the reputation of Her Majesty's Theatre in Germany'.[7]

When Reuss was in London again a few days later he learned that, at a meeting of the Socialist League held during his absence, he had been expelled from the League on the grounds that he had 'furnished information to a foreign government and the bourgeois press'. In other words, it was supposed that he was working for the Prussian political police. In this context the evidence against him was never better than circumstantial and the present writers cannot prove that he was a police spy. On 5 October 1887 the London Evening News published an article by him on the machinations of London anarchist circles which can only have confirmed suspicions which were already current. On 7 January 1888 William Morris printed an extensive list of alleged Prussian police spies in The Commonweal. Reuss was described as 'now Bismarck's political agent on the Central News of London; contributor to the Suddeutsche Presse at Munich and the Berliner Zeitung at Berlin.'

When Reuss realized that the quality of his voice would not qualify him to pursue a career as a singer he turned to a combination of journalism and managerial and publicity activities in the theatrical and operatic worlds in order to earn a living. He seems to have remained in London until 1889 when he moved to Berlin in his capacity as the Central News agency's representative there. This connection lasted until 1897. He also represented the London Daily Chronicle at Berlin. However, he was in London from time to time. For instance in 1891 he devised and produced the 'Germania' feature at the Earls Court Exhibition. This involved tableaux vivants illustrating scenes from German history and required a cast of six hundred and a hundred animals. He was present in a journalistic capacity at the Chicago International Exhibition in 1894, covered the Bayreuth Wagner season for the United Press in 1896 and was a regular chronicler of the festivals which were held at Friedrichsruh in celebration of Bismarck's birthday after 1894. He reported on the Imperial Manoeuvres for a number of years after 1896 and in the spring of 1897 went to Greece and Turkey on behalf of the Berlin Das Kleine journal to report on the current hostilities between those countries. Thus on 23 February 1898 the Bavarian Minister in Berlin wrote to inform him that H.R.H. the Prince Regent of Bavaria had no objection to his accepting and wearing the 'silver war medal awarded to you by His Majesty the Sultan as a memento of the Turkish Greek campaign'. In 1902 Reuss described himself as a 'Knight of the Imperial Ottoman Medjidie Order.'[8]

Reuss's first known literary production was published in 1887. This was an eight-page pamphlet with the title The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View[9]. According to Reuss: 'With the reorganisation of society, with the social revolution, with the establishment of communism, which we advocate, woman will be really free and man's social equal.' More than half of this brief text consists of a literal translation from a chapter in Max Nordau's The Conventional Lies of our Civilisation, which was a recent best-seller in Germany.

While we know a fair amount about Reuss's life between November 1876, when he was initiated in the Pilgrim Lodge, and his encounter with Leopold Engel in Berlin in 1895 to which we shall immediately refer, there is no evidence which points to any interest in Freemasonry during that period of close on twenty years.

4. CONTACTS WITH OCCULTISM

An article by Reuss on 'Pranatherapie' will be found in the June 1894 issue of the occult periodical Sphinx. It was published under the pseudonym Theodor Regens. In it he described how he had cured an old lady's insomnia by applying his hands to her head. The article's title suggests a familiarity with Theosophical terminology. In 1914 he told A. E. Waite that he had known Helena Petrovna Blavatsky well and had once held high office in the German branch of the Theosophical Society[10]. Again, in his pot-boiler Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man okkulte Krafte? (What is Occultism and how does one develop occult powers?), published under the pseudonym Hans Merlin at Berlin in 1903, he referred to his friendship with Madame Blavatsky and mentioned that he had been present at a memorial ceremony at her house in Avenue Road a few days after her death in May 1891[11]. As an 'occultist' Reuss seems to have been mainly interested in yoga and the theoretical- connections between certain chakras (nerve centres) and sexuality.

At this time during the mid-1890s he was meeting various people who were preoccupied with various aspects of occultism. They were all to become involved in his later masonic operations. One of them was Dr Karl Kellner (1850-1905), an Austrian paper chemist and industrialist who had profitably exploited a number of patents connected with paper-making processes. He was one of the few contemporary Europeans with a detailed knowledge of yoga theories and techniques and in 1896 distributed a privately-printed paper on 'Yoga: a summary of its psycho-physiological connections' to those who attended the Third International Congress for Psychology held at Munich in 1896[12].

Reuss regarded Kellner as an Adept and in the 1912 (jubilee) number of Oriflamme wrote:

In the course of his many and extensive travels in Europe, America and the Near East, Bro. Kellner came into contact with an organisation which called itself 'The Hermetic Brotherhood of Light'. The stimulus which he received through his association with this body, as well as other circumstances which cannot be mentioned here, gave rise to Bro. Kellner's wish to found a sort of 'Academia Masonics' which would make it possible for questing brethren to become acquainted with all the existing Masonic degrees and systems. In the year 1895 Bro. Kellner had long discussions with Bro. Reuss in Berlin about how this idea of his could be realised. In the course of talks with Bro. Reuss he abandoned the proposed title 'Academia Masonics' and produced reasons and documents for the adoption of the name 'Oriental Templars'. At that time in 1895 these deliberations did not lead to any positive result because Bro. Reuss was then busy with his revived Order of the Illuminati and Bro. Kellner had no sympathy for this organisation or for the people who were active in it with Bro. Kellner.

So there was Dr Kellner wanting to found 'a sort of "Academia Masonics" '. According to the only published record of his alleged membership of the Craft he was initiated in the Humanitas Lodge at Neuhausl in Austria. Recent enquiries have revealed that this lodge cannot be traced. He called himself 'Herr Doktor Kellner' but we have not been able to establish when and where he obtained his doctorate. No academic title is mentioned in the Osterreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, 1815-1950 (1965).

In our opinion it would be a waste of time to try to investigate the importance or otherwise of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Nor is it greatly significant that Reuss claimed to have talked about 'Oriental Templars' as early as 1895. However, we must take note of the fact that he was 'then busy with his revived Order of the Illuminati', also that Dr Kellner had no use for the Order or the people who were then associated with Reuss.

Adam Weishaupt's original Order of the Illuminati - it was not masonic although it infiltrated Freemasonry -had been banned in Bavaria in 1784. Reuss claimed in 1914 that he had actually revived the Order at Munich in 1880 but nothing is known about this[13]. Now we discover that he was repeating the experiment at Berlin in 1895. There are no contemporary documents but we can identify three of Reuss's contemporary associates: August Weinholtz, Max Rahn and Leopold Engel. All of them were occultists and according to Reuss it was Engel whom Dr Kellner particularly disliked.

Weinboltz and Rahn were both at Berlin; Engel lived at Dresden. Rahn had a job at the Borse (stock exchange) and Weinholtz owned a business which supplied equipment for horse drawn carriages. Engel was an itinerant actor who practised hypnotism and alleged naturopathic healing on the side.

In 1896 they were prominent members of the Verband Deutscher Okkultisten (League of German Occultists). Rahn and Engel were its joint secretaries and Weinholtz its treasurer[14]. Rahn and Weinholtz were respectively the editor and publisher of the periodical Die Ubersinnliche Welt (The Supernatural World) which was mainly concerned with alleged psychic phenomena, animal magnetism and similar subjects. In his turn Leopold Engel edited and published a tedious little periodical, Das Wort (No. I, 1894), which reflected its proprietor's vague esoteric preoccupations. Finally, in 1897-8 Rahn and Engel edited and published an 'International Directory of Seekers after Truth' for the benefit of the occult fraternity.

5. LEOPOLD ENGEL

Leopold Engel was born at St Petersburg on 19 April 1858. His father, Karl Dietrich Engel (1824-1913) was a violinist and in 1846 became Konzertmeister (leader) of the orchestra of the Imperial Russian Theatre. When he returned to Germany he eventually settled at Dresden and wrote extensively on the Faust legend. More importantly in the present context he was a follower of Jakob Lorber (1800-64), also a musician, who 'heard voices' and accordingly produced his own Gospel according to St. John in ten volumes and similar inspirational works by a process of automatic writing. In 1891 Leopold Engel heard an inner voice which commanded him to go to his desk and write and accordingly recorded the text of an eleventh volume. Many years later (in 1922) he was to commemorate his own father's utterances from beyond the grave but forty-four pages rather than eleven volumes were sufficient for this purpose[15].

6. THE REVIVAL OF THE ORDER OF THE ILLUMINATI IN 1895

Reuss claimed that he first met Leopold Engel in 1895, the year in which he revived his Order of the Illuminati at Berlin, and that Engel joined the Order on 9 November 1896. But then 'in 1897 Engel founded his own Order of the Illuminati at Dresden but it was united with my Order in 1899'[16]. It is unlikely that the Reuss-Engel 'Illuminati' managed to recruit many members so in order to make the Order more attractive its chiefs resolved to give it a masonic complexion. With the exception of Reuss there is no evidence that any of those concerned had ever been initiated in a regular freemasons' lodge. Indeed, Reuss himself does not appear to have been involved in any regular Masonic activity since he had joined the Pilgrim Lodge in London in 1876.

Thus on 12 March 1901 'the Illuminati Theodor Reuss, Leopold Engel, August Weinholtz, Max Rahn and Siegmund Miller, who were joined by Max Heilbronner and Georg Gierloff ' met at Reuss's home in the Belle Alliancestrasse at Berlin 'and resolved to re-open the (Ludwig) Lodge which had been founded at Munich in 1880'[17]. According to the minutes the dormant Ludwig Lodge was 'ancient and accepted', which infers an ignorance of Masonic terminology. In any event, whatever the Ludwig Lodge at Munich may or may not have been, it was certainly never regular. The following officers were then unanimously elected.

Master: Theodor Reuss ('initiated in the Pilgrim Lodge, London, on 9 November 1876').

Senior Deacon: Leopold Engel ('Orient St Petersburg'! Since Engel appears to have returned from Russia when Leopold was still a boy this was an extraordinary claim. In 1914 Reuss claimed that he himself made Leopold Engel a freemason).

Since it appeared necessary to have a warrant the brethren had one printed by Seydel & Co., at Berlin. It was issued by the Order of the Illuminati and referred to the Order's specific authority to form masonic lodges. Reuss was now accorded the sole right to found and consecrate masonic lodges according to the Order's 'lodge regulations'. All masonic documents were to be signed and sealed at the Order's office at Dresden. For some unknown reason this document was backdated to 1 January 1900.

There was yet another warrant or its equivalent. According to Leopold Engel it had been given to Adam Weishaupt when the latter was at Regensburg on 19 November 1786 by 'the Prince of Rose-Croix Bro. Louis-Gabriel Lebauche of Bazeille, near Sedan. It had always been in the possession of Illuminati and is now in the custody of the Ludwig Lodge.'[18]

The foundation of the Ludwig Lodge was duly announced in the Rahn-Weinholtz periodical Die Ubersinnliche Welt, where it was stated that 'the Order of the Illuminati founds and warrants masonic lodges. However, only master masons can be accepted in the high degrees or found freemasons' lodges.... The Order has close connections with freemasons in France, England and America.' It was also emphasized that the lodge was masonically regular and worked a recognized ritual based upon an old and genuine English exemplar. Apart from the three craft degrees there was also a fourth St Andrew's degree. 'Master masons who are in possession of the St Andrew's degree and wish to pursue occult studies can be received into the Rosicrucian degree . . .'

The brethren soon began to hear objections that the Ludwig Lodge was nothing more than an offshoot of the Order of the Illuminati and not masonic'. A solution was easily found. On 3 July 1901 the lodge ceased to have any official connection with the Order.[19]

In the meantime Reuss had fished around and netted some additional lodges so that by the end of 1901 in additional to the Ludwig Lodge his new 'Obedience' included:

Adam zur Weisheit (Dresden)

Phonix zur Wahreit (Hamburg)

Zur hellen Morgenrote (Kattowirz.)

Zur aufbluhenden Rose der Bestandigkeit (Zittau)

Katharine zum stehenden Lowen (Rudolstadt)

None of them was recognized by any of the regular German Grand Lodges. The Hamburg and Kattowitz lodges had previously been affiliated to the Allgemeine Burgerloge at Berlin. The latter was a 'pseudo Grand Lodge' operated at Berlin by O. Hemfler, a bookseller who sold masonic pins and badges to the gullible. Some of the ABL lodges only had one or two members.[20]

7. REUSS AND THE RITE OF SWEDENBORG

Reuss soon realized that the Grosse Freimaurer Loge fur Deutschland would never be recognized by the old-established German Grand Lodges. However, it was supposed that the new Grand Lodge's position would be stronger if it could claim affiliation with a masonic body which was not considered as irregular. The necessary link was contrived in a curiously oblique manner. At an unknown date in 1901 he learned that Dr Gerard Encausse who, under the pseudonym 'Papus', was the most prominent French occultist, had received permission from England to work the Rite of Swedenborg in France. Encausse was the head of the Martinist Order which was not masonic. Nor was he a regular freemason. Indeed the French masonic authorities regarded him with suspicion.

Encausse's authority to establish the Rite of Swedenborg in France derived from John Yarker (1833-1913) of Manchester, who had imported it from Canada in 1876[21]. It has been generally supposed that Yarker conducted his various masonic enterprises - of these the Antient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim was the most notorious - for his own financial benefit. The available information suggests that this theory is incorrect. He was merely an irascible eccentric who liked to run his own show. The United Grand Lodge of England could hardly object if he chose to call himself Grand Master of this or that because he was careful never to infringe the latter's exclusive control of the Craft and Royal Arch degrees.

The Rite of Swedenborg with six degrees - the first three were never worked in any English Swedenborgian lodge - had never been popular in England. A year after Yarker received his Canadian warrant in 1876 there were ten lodges and two more were established in 1879. Lodge No. 13 ('Eri') was founded at Limerick in 1886. There were no further developments until c. 1900 when Yarker gave Encausse permission to found I.N.R.I. Lodge No. 14 at Paris. The inference is that Encausse had told Yarker that he was not a Grand Orient freemason but had failed to reveal that he had never been regularly initiated.

Reuss knew about Encausse's Swedenborgian venture and wrote to him to ask for further information. In due course Encausse replied in an undated letter and told his T.'.C.'.F.'. (Tres Cher Frere) that he had been in touch with the 'Messieurs' of the Swedenborgian Rite with regard to 'representation in Berlin'. He advised Reuss to write in English to Dr William Wynn Westcott, the moribund Rite's Supreme Grand Secretary[22]. (A. E. Waite remarked in his 'Annus Mirabilis Redivivus' MS. diary on 10 October 1902 that Westcott 'is a man whom you may ask by chance concerning some almost nameless Rite and it will prove very shortly that he is either its British custodian or the holder of some high office therein').

So Reuss wrote to Westcott and in due course became aware that, apart from controlling the Rite of Swedenborg, Yarker was also Sovereign Grand Master of the combined Rites of Memphis and Misraim, also of the Cernau 'Scottish' Rite of 33 degree. As far as Reuss was concerned these were a great deal more attractive than the Rite of Swedenborg because if he could get hold of them he would be able to offer 'high grade' Freemasonry, which was unknown in Germany. He asked Westcott to apply to Yarker for a warrant for Memphis & Mismaim, etc., but Westcott was unwilling to cooperate. While the Rites were tolerated in England the masonic establishment and, in particular, the Supreme Council 33 degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, regarded them as unwelcome aberrations. However, he was willing to help Reuss as far as the ostensibly innocuous Rite of Swedenborg was concerned.

Reuss went to London in December 1901 and saw Westcott, whom he had already met in Theosophical Society circles a decade earlier[23]. Westcott wrote to him on 31 January 1902: 'I am in correspondence with Bro. Yarker G[rand] Master on your subject and will get you what you want from him if possible soon' - meaning a warrant for the Rite of Swedenborg. However, there was a snag: 'Some of your German Masons are hostile: some German Masonic journalist is trying to attack you and suggests that you want to "make Masons clandestinely" - that is underhand - he has written to an Official of the Grand Lodge of England for information.'

Anticipating the receipt of the Swedenborgian warrant Reuss and his friends thereupon dissolved the Grosse Freimaurer Loge von Deutschland because they had prospectively no further use for it. The Ludwig Lodge now became the 'Grand Mother Lodge Ludwig'.

Westcott wrote again on 14 February 1902 and implied that Yarker would allow Reuss to form a Swedenborg lodge, the Holy Grail No.15, at Berlin.

... Bro. Yarker is entirely within his rights to give you, a known Master Mason of England, a Warrant for a Lodge but hesitates to give authority for 6 Lodges, which your [Masonic periodical] Latomia says are not regular"[24]. I had got his permission to make a Prov. Grd. Lodge of Germania for you, but now he hesitates - because he does not want to have half the German Masonic world condemning him - as half the English one would condemn him for the A(ntient) & P(rimitive) Rite.

A copy of the warrant, in Westcott's handwriting, dated 21 February 1902, indicates that Reuss was now authorized to found the Swedenborg Lodge of the Holy Grail No. 15 at Berlin, 'and to found subordinate Lodges at his discretion'. According to the warrant: 'The following "Swedenborgian Lodges" in Germania to include approved Master Masons are now desirable for constitution'. In addition to 'Ludwig im O[rient] Berlin' he listed the five lodges which Reuss had already 'captured' and added that they were 'accepted under the guarantee of Bro. Theodor Reuss'.

Reuss was Provincial Grand Master and most of the 'Illuminati' already mentioned (but not Max Rahn) were appointed Grand Officers.

For good measure on 24 February 1902 Westcott also authorized Reuss to form a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, with Reuss as its Magus and Engel as Magus Delegatus Primus. The S.R. in Germania never had more than a handful of members and the High Council in London declared it extinct on 11 July 1907.

Reuss and Engel finally parted company during the summer of 1902. On 3 July, according to Reuss, the officers of the Grand Mother Lodge Ludwig resolved to expel Engel and his friend Siegmund Miller on account of certain alleged misdemeanours and they were accordingly banished[25].

In 1906 Engel bitterly recalled his earlier association with Reuss who, he wrote, had falsely claimed that he possessed the necessary authority to revive the Order of the Illuminati and stated that he had already recruited an impressive number of worthy individuals. According to Engel it was all a sham, 'because all that was available was what second-hand booksellers could provide' and the worthy individuals only existed on paper[26]. The Order of the Illuminati continued to exist under Engel's direction and in due course developed its own irregular Masonic affiliations.

Reuss's periodical Oriflamme commenced publication, initially as a monthly, with the issue dated January 1902 although it cannot have been published until a month later. According to its subtitle it was then the 'Organ of the German High-grade Freemasons of the Swedenborg Rite and the Order of the Rosicrucians', i.e. the Societas Rosicruciana in Germania. The majority of the articles printed in Oriflamme are completely without interest but it is a useful although seldom complete source of information about Reuss's activities.

8. REUSS AND THE RITE OF MEMPHIS AND MISRAIN

Reuss soon rcalized that the Rite of Swedenborg would not be a success in Germany, probably because the rituals for its three higher degrees created as little interest as they had in England during the 1870s. Alternatively they were never translated or worked. As a Provincial Grand Master of the Rite he was now able to deal with Yarker without using Westcott as an intermediary and during the summer of 1902 applied to him for a warrant for the Rite of Memphis and Mismaim.

The Rite of Memphis and Mismaim was but one item in the extraordinary collection of rites upon which Yarker metaphorically sat at Manchester. Memphis and Mismaim already had a long and chequered history in France and the before Yarker acquired it from a doubtful American source in 1872. In the November 1884 issue of his periodical The Kneph he announced that he had just obtained 'the authority of the Cernau Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Rite'. This news can hardly have pleased the Supreme Council 33 degree[27].

Yarker was willing to give Reuss a warrant for the Antient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mismaim, also for the Cerneau (New York, 1807) version of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. In connection with his prospective 'high grade' operation Reuss recruited two gentlemen who had not previously been associated with his masonic manoeuvres in Germany. They were his old friend Heinrich Klein and Dr Franz Hartmann. In order to give them the necessary status in or about September 1902 Yarker appointed all three of them to high office in his Sovereign Sanctuary, the body which ostensibly controlled all the variegated high-grade rites in his possession. The warrant, dated 24 September, followed immediately. It authorized Reuss (as Sovereign Grand Master General), Hartmann (as Grand Administrator General) and Klein (as Grand Keeper of the Golden Book) to establish a Sovereign Sanctuary in Berlin and, indeed, to do a great many other things.

According to Reuss in the December 1902 issue of Oriflanime: 'Thus the Sovereign Sanctuary for the German Reich [i.e. for the M & M Rite] and the Grand Orient in Germany [i.e. for the Cerneau 33º Rite] is entitled to found, accept and consecrate Masonic lodges in the whole of Germany and to work the collective degrees from the first (1 degree) to the last, the degree of Grand Inspector General (33º - 95º), and to accept candidates (i.e. for initiation] and advance them.' The important factor was that Reuss now claimed authority to initiate freemasons and work the craft degrees in Germany. As might be expected the German Grand Lodges who were members of the Grosslogenbund (Union of Grand Lodges) did not recognize either Reuss or his rites.

Reuss took the obligation as Grand Master General at a ceremony held at Berlin on 11 November 1902. Once again there was one of those changes of course which make this story so confusing. He announced that the Grand Mother Lodge Ludwig and its handful of associated Swedenborgian lodges had now ceased to exist. The new Sovereign Sanctuary proceeded to found new lodges but these were simply the successors of the old ones. At Berlin, however, the Lodge Zur siegenden Sonne was the former Ludwig Lodge under a new name.

Reuss was also able to report that the Sovereign Sanctuary had already exchanged representatives with various Sovereign Sanctuaries, Grand Orients, etc., in Italy, Spain, Rumania and the Argentine. A few months later he was able to add Cuba and Egypt to the list. Needless to say, none of these bodies exchanged representatives with the United Grand Lodge of England or the German Grand Lodges. In this context we encounter a curious 'Memphis and Misraim' underworld.

According to the Sovereign Sanctuary's Constitution, published in Oriflamme (December 1902), its craft lodges were to use the Pilgrim Lodge's by-laws and the 'Hamburg (Schroeder) ritual as adopted by the Pilgrim Lodge in 1852'.

It would be an exaggeration to suggest that there was a rush of applicants for Reuss's motley collection of high degrees. A year after the reccipt of Yorker's warrant the total membership of the Sovereign Sanctuary's lodges and chapters amounted to no more than 132 brethren[28]. However, at least a few of them were members of lodges which belonged to recognized German jurisdictions. Thus when August Weinholtz went to Dr Robert Gross's thermal establishment at Bad Finneck as 'Director of the Baths' in the autumn of 1903, a certain Bro. Uhlmann, who had been initiated thirty years earlier in the Lodge Zur den drei Kleeblattern (Grosse Landesloge) acted as Deputy Master of the Lodge Zur siegenden Sonne. Dr. phil. Gustav Diercks, who was a member of a 'Three Globes' lodge, was briefly the Sovereign Sanctuary's Grand Secretary General for Foreign Correspondence in 1903-4[29].

The list of the Sovereign Sanctuary's Grand Officers, published in Oriflamme, December 1902, identifies the people who were then associated with Grand Master General Reuss:

Deputy Grand Commander General: Bro. Franz Hartmann, Privatgelehrter ['private scholar'], proprietor of the Ligno-sulphite works at Hallein, temporarily at Villa Maria, Florence'[30]. Hartmann was one of the most prolific writers of his generation on Theosophy, magic and occultism.

Grand Keeper General of the Golden Book: Bro. Henry Klein, Proprietor of the Polyphon [gramophone] Works at Leipzig and London. (According to the London P.O. Directory for 1904 Henry Klein & Co., of 84 Oxford Street, were 'musical instrument makers, dealers and repairers; suppliers of polyphons, phonographs and all kinds of talking machines, organettes, billiard tables.')

Grand Expert General: Bro. Robert Gross, physician and proprietor of the Stahlbad Finneck. (He was formerly a member of the Order of the Illuminati and a founder member of the Ludwig Lodge, Berlin in 1901. He was above all an occultist.)[31]

Grand Director of Ceremonies General: Br. Rudolf Barth, director of the municipal gas works at Rudolstadt.

Grand Treasurer General: Bro. Max Heilbronner (he was the proprietor of an antiquarian bookshop ('by Royal Appointment') at Berlin with a branch in Paris). Formerly a member of the Order of the Illuminati and a founder member of the Ludwig Lodge at Berlin.

Whether there was already an 'Inner Occult Circle' at this time is not known, although it existed in 1905. Nevertheless the Sovereign Sanctuary had an official Patron in the person of Reuss's friend Dr Karl Kellner, who was a dedicated occultist.

It was typical of Reuss's persuasiveness that in the spring of 1904 he was able to stage-manage the alleged regularization of an unrecognized masonic body which had a far larger membership than his own. This was the Grosse Freimaurer Loge von Deutschland which had about thirty daughter lodges and 700 members. Its headquarters were at Leipzig[32].

The GFLvD had its origins in the irregular Allgemeine Burgerloge which was founded at Berlin in 1896. A number of ABL lodges broke away in April 1899 and founded an independent ABL at Leipzig. The latter, with twenty-one lodges, changed its name to the Matthai Logenbund in July 1900. There was another change of title in July 1903 when the MLB became the GFLvD. By 1904 its aims and the work of its lodges appears to have been regular in everything but name.

In 1914 A. P. Eberhardt, the GFLvD's Grand Master, explained why he and his colleagues had approached Reuss. There had been frequent resignations by individuals who had realized that they were not 'proper freemasons'. Reuss offered a solution. For a fee of 800 Marks on 12 May 1904 he'rectified' the Grosse Freimaurer Loge von Deutschland and twenty-nine daughter lodges with 702 members and declared them to be 'regular'. A week later he wrote to the Grosslogenbund to the effect that the Sovereign Sanctuary and Grand Orient of the United Scottish and Memphis and Misraim Rites in Germany now included thirty-five craft lodges and 845 members. This communication did not attract even an acknowledgment. However, a simple mathematical calculation indicates that Reuss's masonic empire had previously consisted of six lodges with a total of 143 members.

In 1904 Reuss published a 32-page pamphlet with the title Historische Ausgabe der Oriflamme ('Historical Edition of the Oriflamme'). It was addressed to 'all who want to learn the truth and real facts of Masonic historical research'. His intention was to demonstrate the historical authenticity of his collection of rites on the basis of documentary evidence. We now learn of a direct connection with the original Knights Templer. In this context, according to Reuss, no documents could be published because the initiated were well aware that Masonic bodies which cultivated the Templer and Rosicrucian traditions had been forbidden to make written records. 'Proofs of our connection with the Templers are available,' he wrote, 'but they are not of a documentary nature. They are only communicated to the initiated.' Finally: 'Our Order not only provided the opportunity for acquiring a knowledge of all existing Masonic systems but also of the secret knowledge and cults of all ages.' He included an article on 'the Secrets of the Occult High Degrees of our Order' but did not reveal anything.

The fact that there was an inner occult group was announced in the November 1904 issue of Oriflamme.

To the Pupils of the Occult Circle

Our beloved leader Frater Karl Kellner is severely ill and hopes for his recovery are small. All the Fratres of the Occult Circle are thus asked to unite with us in their daily meditations in thewish that our leader will on this earthly plane! AUM! Vienna, 4 November 1904 E.V.

The Inner Triangle

In March 1905 it was reported that Dr Kellner was in Egypt and that his convalescence was progressing satisfactorily. However, he died at Vienna on 7 June. According to the certificate his death was due to blood poisoning but his medical advisers could not establish what caused it. Later various lurid rumours about his illness and death were circulated, e.g. that in the course of his arcane occult exercises he had attracted malignant forces[33]. Dr Franz Hartmann succeeded him as Honorary Grand Master General in October 1905.

11. CRACKS IN THE FABRIC OF THE SOVEREIGN SANCTUARY

In August 1905 Reuss intended to go to London and remain there for an apparently indefinite period. In the event his departure was delayed until 8 January 1906[34]. In view of his impending absence a number of important decisions were taken at an Extraordinary General Meeting of 'Sovereign Sanctuary of the Order of Ancient Templar Freemasons of the Scottish, Memphis and Misraim Rites for the German Reich' held at Berlin on 27 August 1905. The designation 'Templar' now appears for the first time in connection with Reuss's activities.

The main outlines of the scheme of reorganization arranged in August 1905 were roughly as follows. The Sovereign Sanctuary (i.e. Reuss) was to receive specific fees for granting the 'high degrees' but otherwise the day to day running of the Order was to be delegated to the Grand Orient of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite which had its headquarters at Hamburg and the Symbolical Grand Lodge of the Scottish Rite for Germany at Leipzig. The latter was the former Grosse Freimaurer Loge von Deutschland which Reuss had rectified in 1904.

The Hamburg organization, with Franz Held as Grand Commander General, had two subsidiary Grand Councils: one at Hamburg under Held and another at Munich under Maximilian Dotzler. The Hamburg Grand Orient was granted virtual autonomy as far as the control of four chapters and seven craft lodges were concerned. The Sovereign Sanctuary (i.e. Reuss) no longer received a capitation fee but was to charge 40 Marks for an individual member's first 'high degree' certificate and 10 Marks for all subsequent certificates up to 300. The ratification of these new arrangements was made conditional upon the Hamburg and Munich branches' refunding certain funds which had previously been advanced by Reuss.

However, the Munich members refused to pay the 2,079 Marks which Reuss claimed was due to him. Furthermore, the heads of the Grand Councils at Hamburg and Munich (Franz Held and Maximilian Dotzler) were at loggerheads. The Hamburg branch dissolved itself in December 1905 (only four months after it was formed). Many of its members found their way into regular lodges under the Obediences of the Grand Lodge of Hamburg and the 'Old Prussian' Grosse Landesloge at Berlin. Their path in the direction of regularity had been distinctly tortuous.

In the course of winding up his affairs in Germany Reuss also had to deal with an unpleasant financial problem at Munich. When the Sovereign Sanctuary met at Berlin on 25 September 1904 it was briefly reported that a certain Bro. Hugo Hoffman had made the Order a gift of some real estate at Munich. No further information about this generous action was published until a year later. Reuss was in Munich on 4-5 September 1905 and discovered that the house which Bro. Hoffmann had so kindly presented was worth 173,000 Marks but saddled with a mortgage which would cost at least 241,000 Marks to redeem. Thus Reuss was obliged to take legal action to renounce the gift and avoid paying interest on the mortgage.

12. THE EMERGENCE OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE OF THE ORIENT

Reuss moved to London in January 1906. He was now employed by the Central Press news agency and appears to have been in charge of its German wire service. Although he scarcely acknowledged the fact in Oriflame it is evident that his masonic operation had been a failure. Furthermore he had quarrelled with many of his followers. However, in 1906 when his masonic empire had practically ceased to exist he grandiloquently described himself as 'Sovereign Grand Master General ad vitam of the United Orders of the Scottish, Memphis and Mismaim Freemasons in and for the German Reich, Sovereign Grand Commander, Absolute Grand Sovereign, Sovereign Pontiff, Sovereign Grand Master of the O.T.O. Freemasons, Supreme Magus Soc. Frat. R.C., S I 33º, Termaximus Regens I.O. etc.'[35]

The Absolute Sovereign Grand Master, was able to publish only two numbers of Oriflamme during 1906. Their contents are not of great interest although they throw light upon his disputes with his former disciples. They also indicate that he was now anxious to admit women to Memphis & Misraim, that he was preoccupied with 'sexual yoga' (for want of a better expression), and that his Order of the Templar of the Orient (O.T.O.) would in due course take the place of his other rites.

He issued a warrant for a 'mixed' Memphis & Misraim Lodge in the spring of 1906. The recipient was Dr Rudolf Steiner who had been Secretary General of the German branch of the Theosophical Society since 1902. Steiner was never a Theosophist in the Blavatsky-Adyar tradition and was already on uneasy terms with Annie Besant. He and many of his followers broke away from the Theosophical Society in 1912 when he founded the subsequently influential Anthroposophical Society. According to the announcement in Oriflamme:[36]

Bro. Dr Rudolph Steiner, 33º, 95º, of Berlin and the Brothers and Sisters associated with him have been granted permission to form a Chapter and Grand Council under the title 'Mystica Aeterna' in Berlin. Dr Steiner has been appointed Deputy Grand Master with jurisdiction over members already received or to be received by him. Sister Marie von Sievers (later Steiner's wife) has been appointed General Grand Secretary for the Lodges of Adoption.

(In his posthumous autobiography (The Story of my Life, 1928) Steiner went to great lengths to minimize the significance of his previous connection with Reuss and claimed that 'this symbolic-cultural section of the anthroposophical movement came to an end in the middle of 1914.')

In the same issue of Oriflamme he published a letter from Maximilian Dotzler of Munich who abjectly apologized for slandering him. The extent to which contemporary readers understood the background is uncertain and Reuss himself did not offer an explanation until 1914. It is evident that Dotzler was responsible for disseminating an unsavoury legend about Reuss which was remembered in German and Swiss masonic circles many years later. The gist of the story was that Reuss had shown Dotzler a peculiar yoga exercise - according to the widely-known version there was a phallic element - at the Hotel Metropole at Munich in 1906. In 1914 Reuss stated that he had given Dotzler some instructions relating to quite ordinary Hatha yoga techniques in 1903 (and not at Munich at the Hotel Metropole) and that the 'traditional legend' was completely untrue. There is no reason to disbelieve this statement.

The same issue contained a long article by Reuss on 'The Marriage Question, Sexual Reform and Women's Lodges'. While it might have surprised some contemporary readers it would hardly cause a raised eyebrow today. The only unusual feature was its publication in a periodical which was allegedly masonic.

The next issue (July-December 1906) included a lengthy prepublication review under the heading Lingam-Yoni or the Mystery of Sexual Religion of Reuss's latest book. Lingam - Yoni by 'Pendragon' (i.e. Reuss) was published in 1906 by the Verlag Willsson, Berlin and London. 'Willsson' was Reuss! According to the title-page its author used 'old and secret documents of an Order' but the book was hardly more than a translation of Phallism: A Description of the Worship of Lingam-Yoni . . . and other Symbols connected with the Mysteries of Sex Worship, privately printed at London in 1889.

We cannot understand what induced Reuss to publish this tedious book but suppose that its contents may have had some connection with the so-called 'inner teachings' of the Order of the Templars of the Orient. Much connected with the early history of the O.T.O. is obscure. Reuss stated in 1914 that 'the constitution of the reorganised O.T.O. dates from January 1906', also that there had been an engraved brass plate with the inscription 'Sovereign Sanctuary of the Order of the Templars of the Orient' outside the street level door of his home in the Belle Alliancestrasse, Berlin, in December 1905. He also explained (in 1914) that the O.T.O. was Dr Kellner's projected 'Academia Masonica' although the 'organisation' never had any connection with Freemasonry[37]. It seems unlikely that the O.T.O. was in any sense active as early as 1905-6 and we believe that it was not effectively launched until 1912 when Aleister Crowley became involved.

The Oriflamme did not appear at all during 1907 but two issues were published in 1908 (January and July). The latter contained a report of the International Masonic Conference held in Paris on 9 June 1908. It was organized by Dr Gerard Encausse ('Papus'), who was not even a Grand Orient freemason. In the course of a lengthy discussion it was established to the satisfaction of those present - they were all of French nationality with the exception of Reuss - that neither the United Grand Lodge of Englad nor the Grand Orient could prove their masonic regularity. Papus & Co. then decided to constitute a Supreme Grand Council and Grand Orient of the Antient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim in France and happily accepted a warrant supplied by Reuss.

In the meantime we have lost sight of the Grosse Freimaurer Loge von Deutschland which, having paid 800 Marks for its 'rectification' in May 1904 had pursued an independent existence. According to its Grand Master, Paul Eberhardt, even then there were some who had their doubts about the authenticity of any warrant supplied by Reuss and it was decided to achieve an even greater measure of independence. This was effected on 24 June 1905. It involved a further payment of 600 Marks and a change of name. Thus the GFLvD now became the Symbolical Grand Lodge of the Scottish Rite in Germany, Orient of Leipzig. On 24 June 1909 Reuss cancelled its warrant and transferred it to a Dr Carl Lauer, of Ludwigshafen am Rhein. After lengthy discussions the former GFLvD liquidated its affairs on 31 March 1911 and many of its members found their way into recognized German lodges[38].

The contents of the 1912 'Jubilee edition' of Oriflamme were almost entirely devoted to the O.T.O. Indeed, it was described as the 'Official Organ of the Order of the Oriental Templars and the Sovereign Sanctuary of Ancient Freemasons in Germany'. From this we learn that about 500 members had been recruited in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and that two National Grand Lodges had been constituted ' on 1 June 1912: one for Great Britain and Ireland and the other for 'the Slav countries'. The Head of the O.T.O. for England was 'the Most Holy, Most Illustrious, Most Illuminated, and Most Puissant Baphomet, X degree, Rex Summus Sanctissimus 33 degree, 90 degree, 96 degree, Past Grand Master of the United States of America, Grand Master of Ireland, Iona, etc.' who could be contacted at 33 Avenue Studios, 76 Fulham Road, Kensington, London, SW. The Most Holy, Illustrious and Illuminated gentleman was none other than Aleister Crowley[39].

Crowley proceeded to issue a printed Manifesto of the M.'. M.'.M.'., in which he explained that 'the M.'. M.'. M.'. (Mysteria Mystica Maxima) is the name of the British section of the O.T.O.', also that 'the O.T.O. is a body of initiates in whose hands are concentrated the wisdom and the knowledge of the following bodies':

1. The Gnostic Catholic Church

2. The Order of the Knights of the Holy Ghost

3. The Order of the Illuminati

4. The Order of the Temple (Knights Templar)

5. The Order of the Knights of St John

6. The Order of the Knights of Malta

7. The Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre

8. The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail

9. The Rosicrucian Order

10. The Holy Order of the Rose Croix of Heredom

11. The Order of the Holy Royal Arch of Enoch

12. The Antient and Primitive Rite of Masonry (33 degrees)

13. The Rite of Memphis (97 degrees)

14. The Rite of Mizraim (90 degrees)

15. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry (33 degrees)

16. The Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry

17. The Order of Martinists

18. The Order of the Sat Bhai

19. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Light

20. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and many other orders of equal merit, if of less fame.

We also read: 'The O.T.O., although an Academia Masonica, is not a Masonic Body so far as the craft degrees are concerned in the sense in which that expression is usually understood in England, and therefore in no way conflicts with, or infringes the just privileges of the United Grand Lodge of England.'

Readers of Oriflamme (jubilee edition, 1912) were informed that 'our Order is not a masonic order, pure et simple ... but every member of our Order, man or woman ... must proceed through the craft degrees of Freemasonry, also those of high-grade Freemasonry, before they can be illuminated and initiated members of our Order.'

Now comes the great revelation: 'Our Order possesses the KEY which embraces all masonic and hermetic secrets. It relates to sexual magic and this teaching completely explains all Masonic symbolism and religious teachings.' Now the cat was out of the bag!

13. THE FINAL DECADE

Reuss left London at the last possible moment before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and immediately reported for service with the Red Cross at Berlin. After a brief period spent working for German Counter-intelligence on the Dutch border he moved to neutral territory at Basle where he worked as a newspaper correspondent and taught English at the local Berlitz School. He was now using a visiting card which described him as A. C. Theodor Reuss, 'Honorary Professor at the High School for Applied Medical Science (University of France)'[40]. This center for Higher Learning was probably founded by the egregious Dr Encausse.

One of the strangest features of his Swiss period, which lasted for six years, was the organization of an international 'Anti-National' Congress under O.T.O. auspices at Henri Oedenkoven's extraordinary establishment close to Ascona on Lake Maggiore. 'Monte Verita' had originally been founded during the early 1900s as the contemporary equivalent of a vegetarian 'hippy' commune and was patronized by a typical clientele of 'simple lifers', Theosophists and others with so-called 'progressive' views. The Congress lasted for ten days during August 1917[41]. There is a reference to it in Gottfried zur Beek's notorious Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion (known in its English translation as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) which was an immediate best-seller when it was first published in Germany in 1919. Its author, whose real name was Muller von Hausen[42], quoted from a letter which Reuss was alleged to have written to an unidentified correspondent:

My secret aim for this congress is to bring together land reformers [meaning people interested in rural communal settlements], vegetarians, Theosophists, pacifists ... from Spain, Italy, Holland, Russia, France, etc. and convert their hitherto poisonous anti-German sentiments into something more fair to Germany . . . The 'Anti-Nationalist Cooperative Congress' flag and the draft programme are naturally merely a camouflage... Germany should send two masonic representatives who are men of the world and know the true (not the orthodox) history of Freemasonry and its secret political working[43].

According to Robert Landmann's lively (but not always accurate) annals of the 'Monte Verita' phenomenon Reuss's Congress assumed almost orgiastic qualities. An O.T.O. lodge was founded, there were 'initiations' and Reuss pocketed the money received from the sale of successively higher degrees[44].

In 1918 he published his translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. This was issued under O.T.O. auspices and copies of Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae: Die Gnostische Messe could be obtained from Prof. T. Reuss-Willsson, P.O. Box 15268, Basle. The Professor was identified as the 'head of the Gnostic Neo-Christians and Oriental Templars: Carolus Alberrus Theodorus Peregrinus, Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, Vicarius Solomonis et Caput Ordinis O.T.O.' The source of the Patriarch's ecclesiastical preferment is unknown[45].

In 1919-20 Reuss resumed his former 'masonic' activities and on 25 May 1919 founded a 'Swiss Grand Orient for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish 33 degree Rite (Cerneau, New York 1807)' at Zurich. Daughter lodges were soon constituted at Bellinzona, Bern, Chiasso (two) and Mendrisio. After Reuss's departure some of them were regularized[46].

Reuss was also involved in the Congress of the International Masonic Federation held at Zurich in July 1920. It is unlikely that a single regular freemason was present. The proceedings appear to have been dominated by the notorious Matthew McBlain Thomson, of Salt Lake City, U.S.A.[47] Two years later he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for illegally using the U.S. mails for the sale of spurious masonic degrees. Thomson subsequently wrote a lively account of his visit to Zurich. It was published in his periodical The Universal Freemason (September 1920):

I also met Bro. Reuss - he is a typical German, wanting his own way or spoil things. I found that he had a patent from Bro. Yarker, empowering him to establish the Rite in Germany, and on the strength of this had been charging a royalty on every candidate entered. He wanted me to endorse this way of doing things, and on my refusing, got mad and said he would allow no Englishman or Scotchman to interfere with his private affairs. He then wanted to have two bodies separately in Switzerland recognised as members of the Federation, viz.: The Grand Orient (from which he had been drawing a royalty), and what he was pleased to call-the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Memphis Rite. As the latter consisted of himself, I said that we could not recognise any body unless it had a regular organisation.

Reuss took no further part in the proceedings after the first day (17 July). The current story was that McBlain Thomson paid –him 3000 Swiss francs to stay away[48].

Reuss refurned to Germany in September 1921 and settled at Munich. He died on 28 October 1923. The death certificate described him as 'Professor und Propaganderchef [sic]'.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank Bro. Fritz Bolle (Munich) for searching through old German masonic periodicals for references to Reuss, also Bro. Dr Karl R. H. Frick (Bochum) for supplying a photocopy of Oriflamme, July I914.

[6] For Reuss's journalistic career see the facsimile reprint of his four-page summary of testimonials in Vol. II of Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy, privately printed in France in 1933. (Her Ladyship was a disciple of Nesta Webster, the author of Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, 1924, and discovered a Jewish-Bolshevik-Freemason under every bed.) For similar material about Reuss's career as a journalist, etc., see also Oriflamme, July-Dec. 1906. The entries in Kurschners Deutscher Literatur-Kalender from 1895 onwards should also be consulted.

[7] Echo der Gegenwart, Aachen, Tuesday 18 May 1886.

[8] For all these activities see Lady Queenborough (see note 6 above). For his 'Knighthood' see Oriflamme, I, 11-12, December 1902, where he also described himself as 'Chief Editor at Berlin and Press Manager of the Prinz Regenten Theater at Munich'.

[9] The only known copy is at the International Institute for Social History at Amsterdam. The pamphlet was published by Henry Seymour, editor of The Anarchist: A Revolutionary Review.

[11] Was ist Okkultismus was one of seven or eight short books which Reuss wrote for the Hugo Steinitz Verlag, Berlin, under various pseudonyms between 1901 and 1904. They include Br. Peregrinus, Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen?, 1901 (10th ed. 1931, 36th thousand!).

[12] The text was published by J. F. Lehmanns Verlag at Munich in 1896. It was known to William James who referred to it in a footnote on P. 401 of his famous book The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902.

[13] See Oriflamme, July 1914, p. 9, where it is referred to as 'the masonic lodge Ludwig'. See also Leopold Engel's periodical Das Wort, January 1902, where he stated that the Ludwig Lodge was founded by 'master masons and Illuminati'.

Theocracy (see note 6 above). She mentioned that Brigadier R. B. D. Blakeney had supplied these documents. It seems that Mr Gerald Yorke acquired them when he purchased F. L. Gardner's 'Golden Dawn' collection, which included many Westcott papers, after Gardner's death. Mr Yorke told E.H. in c. 1969 that he lent the Westcott-Reuss letters to the Brigadier, who failed to return them.

[23] For the source of this statement see note 10 above.

[24] Nothing on these lines was published in Latontia in Jan.-Feb. 1902.

[27] "We cannot identify a reliable history (later combined) Rites of Memphis and Misraim. References to them in Masonic encyclopaedias are untrustworthy because successive compilers have been content to repeat time-honoured research in the MS. department at the Bibliotheque Nationale is still necessary. John Yarker published an historical sketch in Constitution and General Statutes of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Antient and Primitive Rite of Mason 1875, but did not accurately identify his French sources. See-also J[ean] Bricaud Historiques sur le Rite Ancien et Primitif de Memphis-Misraim, 1923, revised edition, Lyons, 1938 (16 pp.).

[28] Oriflamme, Sept. 1903, P. 83

[29] Ibid., p. 83

[30] The reference to Hartmann's 'Ligno-sulphite Works at Hallein is obscure. He supposed that the fumes of the sulphite wood-pulp used for papermaking relieved respiratory complaints and operated some kind of sanatorium close to Kellner's industrial undertaking at Hallein. Hartmann's career is briefly described in Ellic Howe, Urania's Children, 1967, pp. 79-80.

[31] Reuss, who had quarrelled with Gross, later took care to emphasize that the latter was a doctor juris and not a physician. See Oriflamme, January 1908, p. 1

[32] For this transaction see Oriflamme, June 1904; and Eberhardt, Winkellogen, op. cit

[33] For this story the principal source is Jean Pear, Weisse und Schwarze Magie, C. 1920, P. 95. See also Maximilian Dotzler's long undated letter to Franz Held and Emil Adrianyi in Oriflamme, July-Dec. 1906, pp. 58-64

[34] There were rumours that Reuss had been obliged to leave Germany precipitately because of an impending public scandal. Reuss denied them and provided a detailed account of his movements during the last half of 1905 in Oriflamme, July-Dec. 1906. p 119.

[35] See Oriflamme, July-Dcc. 1906, pp. 49-50

[36] Ibid., Jan.-June 1906, pp 4-5

[37] Ibid., July 1914, pp. 15-16

[38] See Eberhardt, Winkellogen, op cit

[39] For Crowley's association with Reuss at this time see his Confessions, edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, 1969

[45] Reuss is not mentioned in Peter F. Anson, Bishops at Large, 1964, which is the best account in English of Episcopi Vagantes, nor in F.-W. Haack, Die freibischoflichen Kirchen im deutschprachigen Raum, Munich, 1976. There was probably an 'episcopal' connection of some kind between Reuss and Jean Bricaud, the author of the 'Notes Historiques' about the Antient and Primitive Rite mentioned in note 27 above

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Jakob Lorber.

Jakob Lorber (22 July 1800 – 24 August 1864) was a Christian mystic and visionary from the Duchy of Styria, who promoted liberal Universalism. He referred to himself as "God's scribe". He wrote that on 15 March 1840 he began hearing an 'inner voice' from the region of his heart and thereafter transcribed what it said. By the time of his death 24 years later he had written manuscripts equivalent to more than 10,000 pages in print.

His writings were published posthumously as amounting to a "New Revelation", and the contemporary "Lorber movement" forms one of the major neo-revelationist sects, mostly active in German-speaking Europe, although part of Lorber's writings have also been translated into more than 20 languages (according to the website of the Lorber Publisher) and the world-wide spread adherents do not gather in an institutionalized church, but usually continue to belong to their previous Christian denomination.

Biography

Jakob Lorber was born in Kanischa, a small village in the Jahring parish, Duchy of Styria (now Kaniža pri Jarenini in Lower Styria, Slovenia) to a peasant family, Michael Lorber and his wife Maria, née Tautscher. He was trained as a village teacher.

A brief biography by his friend Karl Gottfried Ritter von Leitner indicates that Lorber was an uncomplicated person.[1]

He was observed while writing by well-educated men in the city of Graz, such as Dr. Carl-Friedrich Zimpel, the mayor of Graz, Anton Hüttenbrenner, his brother the composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner, the poet and Secretary to the Estates Karl Gottfried von Leitner, Dr. Anton Kammerhuber, Leopold Cantily, pharmacist of Graz, and others. These men observed him writing and verified his simple life.[2] Lorber was open and friendly regarding his transcriptions yet found himself involved in small intrigues designed to prove that he was a fake. For instance, the wife of one of his friends was certain that Lorber had studied the material he was pretending to hear from the inner voice, but she never found the scientific books she had supposed he was hiding, eventually finding his only research material to be a single copy of the Bible.[3]

He had musical talent and learned the violin, taking lessons from the virtuoso violinist Paganini, and once giving a violin concert at the La Scala Opera House in Milan. In 1840—the same year he claimed to begin hearing the inner voice—Lorber was offered the position of assistant musical director at the theater in Trieste. He claimed that the inner voice, however, directed him to decline and take up a life of solitude instead. Lorber's writings reveal that the inner voice spoke freely in first person as the voice of Jesus Christ.[4]

Theology, geology, history, free will

Lorber's prose has been described as compelling, moving some readers to compare it with writings by other mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme and Rudolf Steiner. Lorber himself makes reference to Swedenborg, in his book From Hell to Heaven (book 2 chapter 104 verse 4).

Lorber's work shows a resemblance to Swedenborgianism. His Great Gospel of John is a detailed first-person narrative of Jesus' three-year ministry, around 2,000 pages in length and based on the same structure as the Gospel of John, which is described as an eternal book because of John's continual desire to understand the spiritual interpretation of Jesus' parables. The larger book reiterates Jesus' claim to be God himself by revealing many more astonishing miracles than are found in the original gospels.[improper synthesis?]

The New Revelation teaches that redemption from the fallen state of the world is necessary, but unlike orthodox Christianity, which profess this redemption to come only through the blood of Jesus through his sacrificial death, the New Revelation teaches that it cannot be completed without a personal effort consisting in purification processes and works of love done by the individual.[improper synthesis?]

In the Great Gospel of John, the narrator, Jesus, explains that he is the creator of the material universe, which was designed both as a confinement of Satan, and so he could take upon himself the condition of a man. He says he did this to inspire his children who could otherwise not perceive him in his primordial form as a spirit. He gives descriptions of the eons of time involved in creating the Earth. He does so in a manner similar to the modern theory of evolution all the way up to the point several thousand years ago when Jesus placed Adam upon the Earth, which at the time contained man-like creatures who did not have free will, being simply the most clever of the animals.[5]

In comprehensive manner, the Great Gospel of John continually emphasizes the importance of free will. In this book, heaven and hell are presented as conditions already within us, expressed according to whether we live in harmony or contrary to God's divine order. The Great Gospel of John also states that the gospels of John and Matthew were written at the time of the events they chronicle; for instance, Lorber writes that Jesus specifically told Matthew to take notes during the Sermon on the Mount.[4] Such an account seems at first contrary to orthodox Christian theology which typically places the authorship of Matthew some years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that of John even later. However, in the Great Gospel of John the narrator explains how this happened. He claims that there were many writers who described him, including several authors named Matthew, who all wrote similarly over a period of many years.

Paul's epistle to the Laodiceans

Lorber claimed to have heard by the inner voice, in 1844, the "lost" letter Paul wrote to the assembly of the Laodiceans, as referred to in Colossians 4:16. [1]

Several texts purporting to be the "lost" letter survive, notably one brief text preserved in medieval Vulgate manuscripts, attested from the 6th century. Another candidate is attributed to Marcion, listed in the Muratorian fragment. Marcion's text is lost, and the Vulgate text is widely recognized as pseudepigraphical, and was decreed uncanonical by the Council of Florence of 1439-43.[6] There is no resemblance between the letters produced by Lorber via the inner voice and the original manuscripts that survived. Publisher of this Lorber manuscript claims that the letter's being lost reflects the falling away of the Church from true Christianity.[7]

Reception

Publication

Lorber posthumously attracted a following, and his writings were published and frequently reprinted, mostly with Lorber & Turm, a dedicated publisher based in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany. The original manuscripts and copies of some of the manuscripts by close friends of Lorber are still preserved in the archives of the Lorber & Turm publisher.

The German philosopher E.F. Schumacher refers to the New Revelation (NR) in his book “A Guide for the Perplexed” as follows: "They (the books of the NR) contain many strange things which are unacceptable to modern mentality, but at the same time contain such plethora of high wisdom and insight that it would be difficult to find anything more impressive in the whole of world literature. Lorber's books, at the same time, are full of statements on scientific matters which flatly contradicted the sciences of his time and anticipated a great deal of modern physics and astronomy. ... There is no rational explanation for the range, profundity and precision of their contents."[8]

Lorber's work is divided into several books which, in aggregate, are called the New Revelation.

His Great Gospel of John was published in ten volumes and frequently reprinted, the 8th edition dating to 1996. The Gospel of Jacob appeared in a 12th edition in 2006.

Lorber's works have partially been translated into English, appearing with Merkur Publishing.[9]

Adherents

Lorber and his friends were members of the Roman Catholic Church, and Lorber's revelations asked them not to leave the church, but to convince it of the genuinely divine nature of the "New Revelation" by leading exemplary lives. However, the First Vatican Council of 1869/1870 set Lorber's writings on the index. Occultist Leopold Engel was one of Lorber's followers, and also wrote an 11th volume, claiming to be a follow up to Lorber's The Great Gospel of John close to 30 years after Lorber's death.

There is a movement of adherents of Lorber's writings (Lorber-Bewegung, Lorberianer, Lorber-Gesellschaften), mostly active in German-speaking Europe. There is no organizational structure beyond small regional circles, While there is no accurate estimate of the total number of adherents, it likely exceeds 100,000 worldwide.[10]

Criticism

One main point of criticism of Lorber's works was the use of the first person as if the writings were dictated by Jesus Christ himself.[11][12][13] Some statements can be considered anti-semitic,[11][12][13][14] and Lorber was in fact noted by the anti-semitic proponents of "Ariosophy" racial mysticism during the 1920, e.g. by Lanz von Liebenfels, who in 1926 published on Jakob Lorber as "the greatest ariosophic medium of the modern era" (das grösste ariosophische Medium der Neuzeit)[15] Then again it is said in the books of Lorber, that salvation comes to all men from the Jews, and that one should in all truth return to Judaism[16] and that the God of the Jews is the only true, eternal God.[17][improper synthesis?] It is also said to be the will of God or Jesus that all men should be friends, whether they are Jews or gentiles.[18][improper synthesis?]

Kurt Hutten, former chairman of the Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen (EZW, an apologetic institution of the Evangelical Church in Germany) has identified Swedenborg and Lorber as recipients of equally valid private revelation.[19] Official statements of the EZW are more skeptical, assuming psychological explanations for Lorber's revelations. EZW points to a 1966 Berne dissertation by Antoinette Stettler-Schär which diagnosed Lorber with paranoid schizophrenia. This diagnosis has been dismissed by Bernhard Grom, who diagnoses self-induced hallucination.[20] However the current version of the DSM characterizes a mental disorder as "a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual [which] is associated with present distress...or disability...or with a significant increased risk of suffering.", which leads to the fact that no valid psychological diagnosis can be made in the absence of the subject or of any clinical observations concerning a specific distress or disability occurred during his life.

Andreas Finke, vice-chairman of the EZW, concludes that the content of Lorber's revelations reflect both the period during which they were written down and the knowledge of their author, identifying them as "pious poetry in the best sense of the term, but not divine dictation."[21]

• Works by or about Jakob Lorber at Internet Archive• His New Word• Jakob Lorber Online Search Database• The New Revelation of Jesus Christ - English-Romanian site• Jakob Lorber Foundation, New Zealand• Lorber-weblinks• Jakob Lorber Books . com | Books E-Books Links• Jakob Lorber: Letter of St. Paul to the Assembly of the Laodiceans• The Great Gospel of John Vol. 1-10 in English

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Background

Dr. William Wynn Westcott was born in Leamington, Warkwickshire, England on December 17, 1848. Dr. Westcott's parents died when he was 10 years old and he was adopted by his uncle who, like his father, was a medical doctor. Dr. Westcott attended Kingston Grammar School at Kingston-upon-Thames, and graduated from University College, London with a Bachelor in Medicine. He soon went into medical practice with his uncle in Soberest. Dr. Westcott was described by associates of his time as "docile, scholarly, industrious, addicted to regalia and histrionics." He seems to have had no "girlfriends" in the ordinarily accepted sense, but had a great many "platonic" friendships with female initiates.

Magical, Mystical & Masonic Life

In 1875 Dr. Westcott joined the Masonic Lodge at Crewkerne, England, and in he 1878 took a two years' hiatus at Hendon, England to study Qabalah and other metaphysical subjects. In 1881, he became deputy Coroner for Hoxton, and during the early 1890's he was appointed Coroner for the North-East of London. Sometime between 1865 and 1878 he was admitted to Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.) which was open only to high-grade Freemasons. Dr. Westcott became Magus of S.R.I.A. in 1890 and became Worshipful Master of the Research Lodge Quatuor Comati as well.

At least two of the Golden Dawn's original founding members were members of Mme. Blavatsky's Theosophical Society- Dr. Westcott and S. L. MacGregor Mathers. It is unclear if Dr. Woodman was a member. In the book, "The Magical Revival", Mr. Kenneth Grant asserts that "...The Golden Dawn was the inner Mystery School of the Order that formulated itself in the outer world as the Theosophical Society." The Theosophical Society antedated the Golden Dawn by six years. Westcott was soon admitted to the nucleus of the Theosophical Society, the Esoteric Section, and became close friends with Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland who were proponents of Christian Esotercism. When the members of the Esoteric Section broke away from the Theosophical Society, they formed the Hermetic Society in 1884, and Westcott was invited to join as an honorary member.

The Golden Dawn

From about 1885 onwards, the publication "Transacdone," which was issued annually by Metropolitan College of the S.R.I.A., indicated an expansion of interests of the S.R.I.A. from spirituality into regular lectures on the Qabalah and papers on Masonic symbolism. Dr. W.R.Woodman, who was Supreme Magus at the time, was a student of the Qabalah, as were Dr. Westcott and Mathers. However, the S.R.I.A. could not and would not be re-organized as a school for Qabalistic and occult study. The need for an organization to teach and research these subjects lead to the birth of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Rev. A.F.A. Woodford found the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts in a cupboard where Kenneth Mackenzie (a leading Masonic figure of his time) had stored them. Rev. Woodford showed the manuscripts to Dr. Westcott, due to Westcott's reputation as a scholar of ancient lore. The cipher used in the Golden Dawn manuscripts was similar to one used in the 15th century by Abbott Trithemius to encode some of his writings. This cipher was already known to Westcott when he received the documents from Woodford since he possessed a copy of Trithemius' works on the cipher. Westcott was fully conversant with Masonic rituals, and immediately realized that the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscripts were a series of five summarized grade initiations. He commissioned S.L. MacGregor Mathers to re-write the rituals into a workable shape. He chose Mathers due to the latter's reputation as a translator of occult texts and his particular experience and erudition with occult lore and the fact that Mathers was both a Masonic Brother and a co-leader of S.R.I.A. Westcott, Woodman, and Mathers were all IVth degree initiates of the S.R.I.A., and thus formed its governing triad. It is little wonder that the first governing triad of the Golden Dawn were these self-same individuals! Superficially the Golden Dawn represented a deepening extension of S.R.I.A.. with its emphasis on Ritual Magic, Alchemy, and the Qabalah.

Dr. Westcott was very influential in the formation and working of the Golden Dawn. He was responsible for running the Golden Dawn in its early years. He was Praemonstrator of the Isis-Urania Temple in London and was the order's organizing genius. His duties included being "recorder of minutes," superintendent of the 5=6 admission, corresponding secretary and treasurer, not to mention the order's Chief Adept in Anglia from 1896 until the schism. Many manuscripts exist to this date written by his hand, which are principal instruction documents for the Golden Dawn and its Second Order. This multiplicity of functions and offices, in addition to his duties as Coroner, must have filled his every minute.

Both Dr. Westcott and Mathers (Dr. Woodman died very early on in the Golden Dawn's history) were both honest, hermetic scholars, and the teaching of their members fell on their shoulders. They taught Qabalah, Alchemy, Astrology, Geomantic and Tarot Divination, Tattwa Vision and the Pentagram Ritual. Much of the background material for these teachings came from Dr. Westcott; his occult and metaphysical library was unrivaled in his day, and was the library of the S.R.I.A.. The grade structure of the Golden Dawn paralleled that of the S.R.I.A., with the exception of the highest degree of Ipsissimus, which was called Jesus in the S.R.I.A..

Another, seemingly unexplored affinity between Westcott and Mathers, is speculated as the anti-vivisection movement in England at the time they were together. There are brief glimpses of this through Westcott, who after all, was a medical doctor and a coroner and who must have participated in his own share of "animal studies'. However, when the esoteric or occult or magical were involved, Westcott seems to have sided directly with Mathers. For example, in Westcott's publication of the Eleusian Mysteries, he refers only [to] the sacrifice of plants and Herb's and perfumes, and omits any reference to the animal sacrifices known associated with the rites. A careful reading of many of Westcott's papers conveys this tenor toward occult studies.

Dr. Westcott stressed the essential nature of having ten grades, for they represent the ten Sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. In the Golden Dawn document entitled "Historical Lecture, by VH. Frater Sapere Aude, Praemonstrator of Isis-Urania Temple', Westcott states: "The S.R.I.A. and its branches in the several countries, and the Golden Dawn Order both descended from the same parents and predecessors; the one developed into a masculine and Masonic system; the other remaining the ancient and more extended basis of the admission of all bona-fide students: rich or poor and without regard to sex, may alike go on and prosper without interfering with the tranquillity of the other and can lead true and patient students who can Will - Dare - Learn - and Be Silent to the Summon Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness."

By 1896 the Golden dawn was having many internal problems. And around this time Dr. Westcott was requested by political authorities to cease his occult activities with the Golden Dawn. The Order was achieving a notoriety with the press, and it was not seen fit for a Coroner of the Crown to be made shame of in such a way. Someone had sent a letter to Westcott's superiors to engineer their discoveries. Although Dr. Westcott ceased all outward activities with the Golden Dawn, he was still very much involved with its functioning, through either the Masonic or the S.R.I.A.. channels. Later in 1900 (once the furor has stopped) Dr. Westcott again joined the Golden Dawn in the rival Isis-Urania of the Stella Matutina and became its Praemonstrator. Dr. Westcott never at once sided against Mathers during this entire affair. Neither did he claim or disclaim the proof or lack of the same for the existence of the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order.

Publishing

Dr. Westcott published an enormous number of works, besides his medical treatises. He wrote many subjects for the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia; he translated "The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Reg." in 1896 from Levi's work on the Tarot and edited the famous series of monographs entitled, the "Collectanea Hermetica." Many of his writings were in the form of brief handbooks, dealing with such subjects as Alchemy, Astrology, Death, Divination, Numerology, Serpent Myths, Talismans, and Theosophy. He also translated the Sepher Yetzirah into English. Westcott's scholarship, knowledge, and erudition are impeccable. In the field of medicine he published materials on such subjects as alcoholism and suicide. He was accustomed to examining evidence with the greatest possible degree, and most probably conducted more than ten thousand inquests during his period as Coroner 1880 to 1910.

Later Life

In 1918 Dr. Westcott retired from professional life and emigrated to the Republic of South Africa to live with his daughter and son-in-law at Durban to begin work on behalf of the Theosophical Society (and perhaps Masonic work also). He continued his studies, his letters, and his writings. He died in Durban, Republic of South Africa, in July, 1925.